Chic Young, pseudonym of Murat Bernard Young (born Jan. 9, 1901, Chicago—died March 14, 1973, St. Petersburg, Fla., U.S.), U.S. cartoonist who created the comic strip“Blondie,” which, by the 1960s, was syndicated in more than 1,500 newspapers throughout the world.

Young was born into an artistic family and worked at several jobs, including one as a stenographer in a railroad office, for a number of years. He secured his first cartooning job through his friend Edgar Martin, the creator of “Boots and Her Buddies.” Moving to New York City in the mid-1920s, he briefly drew the “Beautiful Babs” series and then for six years drew the “Dumb Dora” comic strip. In 1930 “Blondie” appeared, introducing the pretty, curlyheaded Blondie and her adoring suitor (later husband), the bumbling Dagwood Bumstead. Later were added Mr. Dithers (the tyrannical boss), Baby Dumpling (“born” 1934), Cookie (“born” 1941), and Daisy and her pups. A comedy of situations that only slightly exaggerates life, Blondie was adapted to motion pictures and to a television series and a radio series. The term Dagwood sandwich came into popular usage to describe a towering, multilayered sandwich like the ones that Dagwood made to allay nocturnal hunger.

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During the 1930s the comics page expanded both in quantity of strips and in range of subject matter. Several of the strips created then survive today. One of them, Chic Young’s domestic comedy strip Blondie (begun 1930), has achieved unparalleled international renown, syndicated by the turn of the 21st century to 2,300 newspapers and read by some 250 million people...

wife and husband who appeared in Blondie, an American newspaper comic strip created by Chic Young in 1930. Originally, Blondie Boopadoop was a flighty flapper and Dagwood Bumstead was the bumbling playboy son of a millionaire industrialist. The two were married, and Dagwood was promptly disinherited from the family fortune. Blondie and Dagwood had a son in 1934 (Baby Dumpling,...